GBMINI#2 – Page 11 – M&I / GBMINI

British Invasion 2004

Posted on September 19, 2004February 19, 2017 by Ian C.

Back from my third British Invasion (the first year I just visited, and last year I was there with Jason & Keith).
For this years visit a MINI2 thread got Jason (again) along with Gavin, Ricardo and Rich – and some MINI owners I have not met before including another Jason with an unusual VR MCS!
While it rained heavily in Massachusetts, we stayed dry – an overnight shower left us with clearing skies and eventual sun! This year the new MINIs were recognized as a separate class to the classics; we had 10 including a convertible and a late arrival from Hrach – the convertible drew the lions share of attention – most people have not seen one up close – and it also drew first place in the “peoples choice” awards!

Minolta DSC

GBMINI came away with second place, and the “VR MCS” got third place – no doubt due to the sun reflecting on its roof. As well as the new MINIs, there were many classic Minis and other British cars.
After the MINI awards, Jason again led us on a local drive, including Smugglers Notch and a couple of photo-ops:

Minolta DSC

Sunday morning is much less formal, with cars parked by color instead of class, and events including driving a figure 8 course with the driver blindfolded(!), and the tailgate picnic competition – my absolute favourite was Nightmare Before Christmas:

Minolta DSC

If you love British cars, MINIs or otherwise, put next years British Invasion on your calendar!
Thanks again to Jason for leading us on the run, and to all my MINI owning friends for a great day 🙂

Dyno Day at YarrowSport – Ians version!

Posted on September 12, 2004February 12, 2017 by Ian C.

My thanks again to Gavin for his write-up yesterday; now here is the day from my perspective …
First, lots of MINIs to meet again, including Steves fabulously clean Electric Blue MCS – I first noticed his spotless carpets when I installed a MINI circuit for him, then later saw his engine bay.

But back to the dyno. GBMINI was first tested about 3/4 hour after I arrived … loaded on to the dyno and set up and tested by Yarrow:

The noise during the run is horrifying, with fans to keep the engine somewhat cool, the dyno and of course the noise of the engine being rev’ed up to its max! I recorded and uploaded the run – here is the audio only (you will hear Gavin comment on the low performance at the end!):

I have also uploaded a video of the run but it is over 20MB and not much more interesting than the audio!

The first run was surprisingly low at only 185hp – with JCW claiming 200! Yarrow decided “heat soak” from the drive down might be an issue, and GBMINI was left to cool with a fan blowing on it for a few hours.

Meantime other MINIs ran, with results from 170hp to 192hp depending on aftermarket parts – it was clear that without a reprogram, the pulley and/or exhaust alone do not perform so well. Check out the MINI2 thread for more discussions of the results.

After the other runs, GBMINI was given another chance and showed an improvement to 191hp – still shy of the claimed 200hp but a match for MINIs with aftermarket pulley, exhaust and engine reprogram. For fun, Yarrow and the other dyno guys did another run after “super cooling” the engine intercooler from a cylinder of compressed air (empty of nitrous) – this gave a more than 5% increase to almost 202hp!

So what have we learned:
Testing lots of MINIs together is great fun!
Yarrows dyno gives representative results for a stock MCS and of course reasonable comparitive results for MINIs tested on the same equipment and same day.
Dyno runs make a lot of noise!
Gavins BMP intake gave a reasonable 3-6 increase.
GBMINI showed results no better than a good aftermarket package, and significantly down on claimed JCW figures.
Super-cooling the air into the engine is a big help to maximum performance.

Dyno Day at Yarrowsport – by Gavin

Posted on September 11, 2004February 10, 2017 by Ian C.

Today I joined 15-20 other MINIs for a “dyno day” at YarrowSport, organized by Rich who runs OceanStateMINI. Various MINI Cooper S were tested, equipped from straight stock through pulleys, intakes, exhausts and engine reprograms (and my JCW).

Gavin, who at the start of the day had a stock MCS, was the baseline MINI; I now hand over to Gavin for his write-up on the day and the experiences with his MINI:

Where to start with upgrades to the car..? I had been thinking about it for a while, I?d done the easy things ? change the runflats for Yokohama AVS100s, upgrade the rear sway bar to a 22mm UUC, but what about the drivetrain..?
I had decided that an intake was going to be the next thing, but which one..? I found one for sale on the mini2.com forums; a BMP with only 5,000 miles on it at a very good price. I read up what I could on intakes, but found the more I read, the more confused I became. There?s a lot of myth about what an intake can do for you, especially when it?s called a Cold Air Intake! My main concerns were would it be too noisy and would it contribute a noticeable increase in power. At the last minute I almost backed out of the transaction to buy the BMP when I read that it added more noise than power, but I?m glad I didn?t.
I waited until the MINI dyno day at Yarrowsport before I installed it, planning to do back to back comparisons to the stock intake. It?s a good job I did as mine was the only stock car there out of 12 (?) to go on the dyno and Yarrow needed something for a baseline. Yarrowsport has a load bearing dyno which is the most accurate kind ? guaranteed to be within 2% at the wheel which is then back calculated to a crank value (I think I?ve got that right). The baseline runs came in at 132 bhp at the wheels which worked out to 162.3 bhp at the crank against a claim from MINI of 163 so the dyno seemed to be running well.
Once the baseline had been done my car was returned to the parking lot and I went to work fitting the BMP intake. It was an easy job; unscrew two screws, unclip the hose to the throttle body, unclip the battery terminal from the stock airbox, remove the top half of the airbox and the stock panel filter, drop in the BMP shield and cone filter and reconnect everything. It took all of amount 10 minutes.
When my turn came around, I wasn?t expecting great gains, but I hoped for something more than just noise. After averaging three runs I was very pleased ? 140.2 at the wheels equating to 169.8 at the crank. 8 bhp from a new filter. Not bad at all. The dyno chart shows a gain of about 3 bhp from 4000 to the peak of 8 bhp at the redline. There?s also a modest increase in torque of about 3-6 ftlb across the midrange.
Having watched some cars get close to (and even on occasion, break) the 200 bhp barrier, I?m sure I?ll be doing some other mods, probably an exhaust next, and I?ll certainly be back to Yarrowsport to test their effectiveness.
The last part of the evaluation was the ride home. At normal highway cruising speeds, the new intake was not noticeably louder than stock, certainly not intrusive. The acceleration in gear from around 3000 rpm seemed a little better by the seat-of-the-pants dyno, but I didn?t need to convince myself ? I had the charts to prove it..!

Thanks to Gavin for that excellent write-up. Hopefully soon we will have graph plots to back up the numbers … and watch out for more about this day, including GBMINIs unexpected results …